Welcome to the Wonderful World of the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible! Enjoy these postings of resources, projects by my students, movies and images, links, reflections, humor, and other items related to teaching the Bible at a Flagship Seminary. This blog is interactive: You can add your comments and post your questions. Go ahead, it's fun...

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Now Released: BibleReader 5.0

Both Accordance and Olive Tree have released their new apps for mobile biblical study. I have updated to Olive Tree’s BibleReader 5 over the weekend, and I highly recommend it. For a great (lengthy) overview of the new features, click here.

Below is a screen shot, showing a split-window (NRSV and tagged-Hebrew-BHS) as it appears in the new, more book-like appearance:

Below is a screen-shot showing the app parsing one of the Hebrew verbs in the text:

If you click on BDB or on “Look up” the app will take you to the entries on your selected Hebrew term in the various Hebrew Lexicons on your phone:

In the lower split-screen below we have the new “Resource Guide,” which is perhaps the best new feature in version 5. The Guide automatically displays all the resources on your phone related to the passage currently displayed in the main window. Going to maps, cross-references, dictionaries, etc., is now very fast and very effortless. Amazing!

The screen-shot below shows how to add your own note to a verse:

Finally, here is a screen-shot showing the look of resource-library within the app. Obviously, it mirrors the look of Apple’s own iBooks app:

2 Comments:

The German "Biblische Ausbildung" caught my attention as I searched information about Bible Reader, which I am very fond of as well.

Only one thing annoys me a bit and that is that I can only buy English translations of Kittels Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament and other books.

If the books are originally written in German, I would prefer to read them in that language.

It is, however, refreshing for me as a Danish pastor to use even the relatively small UBS Dictionary, which sometimes gives "fresh" translation suggestions which vary from the German tradition.

For instance gr. parakalo is often in Danish translated rather negative in the sense of warning or scolding instead of more positive inspiring and urging. Here liberal theology’s critical view upon Paul may account for a too negative tone in the translation.

Thanks for these comments, Stefan. Yes, it would be great for the company to expand their offerings to include scholarly works in their original languages. As it is, it appears that the majority of offerings are in English, and indeed, aimed at a rather conservative readership. I suppose this is keeping the company profitable at the moment. ---SLC

Duties of a son, from The Story of Aqhat: To erect a stele for his ancestral gods; to build a family shrine in the sanctuary;
to guard his footsteps from earth to underworld; to take his hand when he is drunk; to put his arm over one's shoulder when he is full of
wine; to eat a funeral meal in the temple of Ba'al; to offer a sacrifice in the house of El.